Benefits of Telemedicine

Another report talking about the cost savings that can be realized by the implementation of telemedicine/telehealth.

Savings of $4.28 billion annually

Fierce Health had some interesting comments on this.

More related items:
California-Could-Become-National-Model-for-Telemedicine
California is the apparent leader in telemedicine. CA will be working on important issues such as reimbursement.

CITL Research
Telehealth Technologies Report Good discussion on the savings and benefits of telemedicine in various care settings: nursing homes, hospitals, correctional facilities etc.

TeleHealth and HealthVault ?

If you are interested in TeleHealth, read this facinating account of how Microsoft's HealthVault can serve as a "HIE Type" platform rather than point-to-point connections from device to nurse to doctor. HealthVault in essence can be a central "patient centric" application to which all data would be sent. Read on...

HealthVault Lays a Foundation to Build Scale for Telehealth
Applications
Today, telehealth applications are based on point to point
relationships: home health agency to patient; disease management company
to patient; health system to patient.
Telehealth devices and their
connectivity are similar. There is a proprietary chain of key components for a
remote patient monitoring (RPM) solution: 1) the RPM device; 2) a gateway
-- which could be mobile like the Biotronik
Cardio Messenger or static like a personal computer -- to aggregate data
from multiple devices and move data to a server-based application; and 3) the
server application that stores and manages the data in accordance with the
application, e.g., glycemic control, medication compliance, etc.